Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

Cisco, West Virginia wasted $5M on enterprise-class gear.

Marmet, West Virginia is a town of 1,500 people living in a thin ribbon along the banks of the Kanawha River just below Charleston. The town's public library is only open Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. It's housed in a small building the size of a trailer, which the state of West Virginia describes as an "extremely small facility with only one Internet connection." Which is why it's such a surprise to learn the Marmet Public Library runs this connection through a $15,000 to $20,000 Cisco 3945 router intended for "mid-size to large deployments," according to Cisco.

In an absolutely scathing report (PDF) just released by the state's legislative auditor, West Virginia officials are accused of overspending at least $5 million of federal money on such routers, installed indiscriminately in both large institutions and one-room libraries across the state. The routers were purchased without ever asking the state's libraries, cops, and schools what they needed. And when distributed, the expensive routers were passed out without much apparent care. The small town of Clay received seven of them to serve a total population of 491 people... and all seven routers were installed within only .44 miles of each other at a total cost of more than $100,000.

In total, $24 million was spent on the routers through a not-very-open bidding process under which non-Cisco router manufacturers such as Juniper and Alcatel-Lucent were not "given notice or any opportunity to bid." As for Cisco, which helped put the massive package together, the legislative auditor concluded that the company "had a moral responsibility to propose a plan which reasonably complied with Cisco's own engineering standards" but that instead "Cisco representatives showed a wanton indifference to the interests of the public in recommending using $24 million of public funds to purchase 1,164 Cisco model 3945 branch routers."

In other words, the project has been a stellar example of what not to do and how not to do it.

Clay, WV, a tiny outpost among the mountains, has 7 Cisco 3945 routers within .44 miles of each other.

A million here, a million there

The routers in question were purchased as part of a much larger grant from the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP), which passed out several billion dollars to help upgrade broadband networks across America as part of President Obama's initial stimulus package in 2009. West Virginia's cash was meant to wire up the many "community anchor institutions" such as libraries, schools, police, and hospitals across the state with Internet access delivered over fiber-optic lines. As part of the project, the state also had to purchase some sort of router for each institution. Instead of "right-sizing" the routers for their intended destinations, the state group of officials charged with implementing the grant decided they would make things easy by purchasing the exact same router and installing it everywhere, even in the most rural locations they planned to reach.

This became controversial in 2012 when local newspapers brought the issue to light and questioned whether the state had not just been boondoggled. The Charleston Gazette noted an official in the state's Office of Technology had actually e-mailed his colleagues to say "this equipment may be grossly oversized for several of the facilities in which it is currently slated to be installed" but that the warning was not heeded. The issue quickly escalated to Congress, where officials from the executive branch were grilled about the West Virginia situation and whether the federal government had exercised enough oversight of the project.

The state of West Virginia has now weighed in with its own report on the routers, and it makes for mind-boggling reading. Consider, for instance, how routers were purchased for the state police. When the West Virginia State Police purchased their own routers a few years earlier, they chose Cisco model 2xxx machines at a cost of only $5,000 or so apiece, with only a single Cisco 3xxx model purchased for the largest deployment. In 2010, when the state received its grant money, no one asked the State Police what they wanted or needed; indeed, the police were "never contacted" at all by the Grant Implementation Team. (This was a widespread problem; the report notes no capacity or user needs surveys were ever done before the money was spent). Instead, the team simply ordered 77 Cisco 3945 routers at a cost of $20,661 apiece—that's one $20,000 router for every 13.7 state police employees—and sent them off to the police. (Each router can handle several hundred concurrent users.)

Had the Grant Implementation Team replaced 70 of these routers with the cheaper model, the state could have saved $1.4 million. And that's assuming that the routers were even needed to begin with—in many cases, they were not.

Such cost savings could have been found all over the state. Nearly all of the West Virginia's 172 libraries could have saved $16,000 per router, saving the state $2.8 million more. Many of the state's public schools are likewise small institutions that could have easily used smaller routers and saved another $3.68 million. In total, another $5+ million could have been spent on tech that was actually useful for the state's residents.

What was the grant team thinking?

Cisco's 3900 series of routers.

Cisco

How it happened

The state Office of Technology contends the massive routers might save the state money in the long run by supporting cheap VoIP systems instead of standard telephone lines. But the legislative auditor notes that each of the 3945 routers can handle 700 to 1,200 VoIP lines, which means that the 1,164 routers purchased by the state could support up to 1.39 million lines. As the auditor's report dryly notes, only a single library in the entire state has more than eight phone lines; most have one or two. (None use a VoIP system anyway.)

Ironically, the routers can't even be used for VoIP in some key cases. The state police already have a VoIP-based phone system, but the new 3945 series routers did not come with "the appropriate Cisco VoIP modules" to work with the system. The state now has to spend another $84,768 to purchase those modules; without them, the state police can't use the routers, only two of which are actually installed and operating. (For those keeping score at home, this means that 75 $20,000 routers are depreciating in a state police warehouse somewhere in West Virginia.)

The report also lays a good deal of blame on Cisco and on the company's engineer for the project. The engineer told the auditor he was simply following the state's instructions, which required him to spec out a proposal using only routers with "internal dual power supplies"—hence the 3945s. As the auditor dug into the story, demanding to know when this exact request was made, the Cisco engineer said it originated with the state Department of Education. But the engineer was "unable to provide the legislative auditor with any e-mails or other documentation" to this effect.

The auditor began digging, speaking to many people in West Virginia state government who had been involved with the project. The Department of Education told him that it "did not request or require that the routers for the state's schools have internal dual power supplies. Education would not have made this requirement because unless a school has two power sources the feature of dual power supplies would have no use." A network engineer for the Department of Education confirmed that he had not requested such a feature.

So the auditor went to the state's Office of Technology, which was also involved in the project. An employee there said that dual power supplies had come up, but only for "24/7/365 locations such as regional jails and DHHR state hospitals." VoIP support was discussed "but not required," he added, and he concluded by saying, "It was never implied to put each feature in all routers."

Cisco defended itself by saying it had drawn up a complete spreadsheet of its proposed bid, and the state had reviewed it. If it didn't need or want these features, or if it thought the routers were too large, it should have said so.

The legislative auditor was also apparently quite peeved by this entire investigation. The auditor's office sent off a fairly testy e-mail to Cisco noting that the 3945 routers were not appropriate for most West Virginia deployments—even according to Cisco's own literature. "I would appreciate an explanation as to why you believe the 3945 routers are not oversized and misconfigured for hundreds of locations," the auditor concluded, "and, thus, a significant over expenditure of millions of dollars for Cisco equipment." The Cisco rep responded the state had reviewed his spreadsheets and not objected and that the 3945s were large enough to allow for future expansion.

The auditor then asked the legislature's own tech team what they used. The West Virginia legislature at peak times can have over 600 internal users and numerous guests accessing "multiple Web servers, up to eight simultaneous live audio webcasts, multiple SQL servers, and multiple Google search appliances located in the Legislature's server farms." Despite all this, the legislature doesn't even use a router but instead runs a cheaper Cisco switch... and it has never exceeded capacity.

The auditor asked one of the legislature's network specialists if he would even want a 3945 router; the man said no because "it greatly exceeds the Legislature's needs." And yet somehow more than 1,000 of them had been sent to the very furthest, most rural corners of the state.

Debarment

The report finds plenty of blame to go around. The ultimate cause of the fiasco, it says, was the fact the grant implementers did not conduct a capacity or use study before spending $24 million. They also used a "legally unauthorized purchasing process" to buy the routers, which resulted in only modest competition for the bid. Finally, Cisco is accused of knowingly selling the state larger routers than it needed and of showing a "wanton indifference to the interests of the public."

Getting any of the money back seems unlikely at this point, but the legislative auditor does have one solid recommendation to make. The State Purchasing division should determine whether Cisco's actions in this matter fall afoul of section 5A-3-33d of the West Virginia Code, and whether the company should be barred from bidding on future projects.

Cisco tells Ars "the criticism of the State is misplaced and fails to recognize the forward-looking nature of their vision. The positive impact of broadband infrastructure on education, job creation, and economic development is well established, and we are committed to working with the State to realize these benefits for the people of West Virginia now and into the future."

As for that $5+ million the state could have saved, it would have paid for 104 additional miles of fiber.

Promoted Comments

They decided on their "high-tech" office building without involving their own technical personnel. As a result, they ended up taking the real-estate salesman's word on everything. They hired me afterwards to set everything up. As I inspected the building, I found that it was wired for less power than any other (four 15A circuits for an office space intended for 20 dual-monitor dual-processor Xeon workstations), wasn't "wired up" for CAT6 network connectivity (all the RJ45 jacks are wired directly into the VOIP system, to the VOIP provider's switch/router).

As a business owner, a public office or a public institution, due diligence is something that will save your ass.

Involve your tech personnel from the very start. HVAC, Electrical, Information Technology. If you don't, you'll end up like a one-room West Virginia library with your entire IT budget wrapped up in a single router.

I've seen this sort of thing a lot in the private sector as well. Many managers and directors don't trust their own IT staff, yet believe every word out of the mouths of sales people. After all, no one ever got fired by buying Cisco, right?

"Forward-looking nature of their vision" my ass! Nobody is arguing that rural users don't deserve adequate connectivity and modern equipment. But that doesn't negate the obvious need to scale technology solutions to the size of the deployment. That one room shack of a library is going to provide the same amount of education and job creation with a $20K Cisco router or a $50 D-Link box, and if you count the cost of the router, they could have spent $19,950 to hire additional staff, purchase other technology, expand programs, or just fix the damn roof, any of which would have been more useful.

Certainly, the state officials who bought this stuff deserve a fair share of the blame, but Cisco deserves the most contempt in my eyes. There's a moral obligation for those of us with more knowledge of technology to not swindle the hell out of those less knowledgeable. That doesn't mean that salespeople shouldn't sell their products or that it's wrong to portray things in the best light for your employer, but wantonly taking advantage of the State to the tune of $5M+ is unconscionable.

I'm not surprised. I was building a very large advanced metro area network a few years back. I asked Cisco for a quote. What I got back was a quote for 4x the actual equipment I needed. I confronted the sales rep. I inquired wether he thought I had no idea what I was doing, or if he had no idea on what he was doing.

This was not the only interaction like this I had with Cisco. I will never trust them again, and only buy them as a last resort after breaking the nuts of the sales reps for a few weeks.

I think its a standard operating procedure for Cisco to pushes massive amounts of unneeded equipment and capacity on the ill informed.

I bet the Cisco SLED team that services the state of West Virginia is far too busy cashing their ridonculous commission checks to give even one half of a shit about how over-spec'd the deal was. This is a "whale" deal, the kind that pays off vacation homes and boats for the sales teams involved and makes the quarter's numbers for the company. The back-slapping all the way up the corporate chain at Cisco are likely so loud that they can be heard across the country.

Disclaimer: I am a Sr. Systems Engineer for a Cisco Gold partner, and work with these technologies on a daily basis.

While I agree that this model of router being sold in such a manner was way overkill for most sites, there is one point that I haven't really seen mentioned. These routers will probably last 10 years or more if properly maintained (I.e. yearly dust cleanings, etc). So value may yet be obtained by looking at this purchase over the long term. It is hard to predict how technology will advance in that timeframe. The 3900 is well positioned to handle higher throughout or more services that may eventually be needed.

I have schools that are still running 3500XL switches that were installed in 2001 and they work perfectly. Also have a client or two still running 2600 routers (late 90s vintage) to tunnel their IBM mainframe traffic. The don't want to upgrade because the system meets their needs, and getting third party equipment to replace something failed is cheap.

They decided on their "high-tech" office building without involving their own technical personnel. As a result, they ended up taking the real-estate salesman's word on everything. They hired me afterwards to set everything up. As I inspected the building, I found that it was wired for less power than any other (four 15A circuits for an office space intended for 20 dual-monitor dual-processor Xeon workstations), wasn't "wired up" for CAT6 network connectivity (all the RJ45 jacks are wired directly into the VOIP system, to the VOIP provider's switch/router).

As a business owner, a public office or a public institution, due diligence is something that will save your ass.

Involve your tech personnel from the very start. HVAC, Electrical, Information Technology. If you don't, you'll end up like a one-room West Virginia library with your entire IT budget wrapped up in a single router.

This is exactly why some people oppose higher taxes - because the government is incapable of spending the money in a reasonable way. (What those people fail to acknowledge is that private enterprises will do the same thing or worse).

As for Cisco's comment about the "forward-looking nature of their vision," perhaps this is our first clue that West Virginia plans to annex all the states east of the Mississippi?

They wanted to standardize the equipment. Fine. I get that. Use the same vendor across the board. But have, let's say three tiers of equipment.

Data center and the large libraries in downtown Big City can use the 3945.

Smaller libraries could go with an ASA 5512/5515/5525.

This little shack of a library with a single PC should have been issued an ASA 5505.

Hell, even the smaller libraries would be OK with an ASA 5505.

Too true. The 5505 throughput is 75mbps to 150mbps depending on what you are doing. That greatly exceeds a connection speed a small library may have. There are 3rd party rackmount kits for 5505 so that isn't a problem. The 5505 even supports HA, if you need redundancy.

Would not have. It sounds like of because out loud we often contract it to "not've" and lazily pronounce 've as uhv. Double contractions like "I'd've'" are also common in verbal speech, but unused in writing. This sometimes spills into writing because we're so used to how we say things out loud and most text editors, which only have spell checkers and not grammar checkers, happily approve of using a correctly-spelled of in inappropriate contexts when we mess up.

Geez. I have a business class internet connection at home (I serve out some small websites for myself and my small business) and I don't even need one of those. Christ - a $50.00 D-Link would be sufficient for that one room library. I understand the benefits of standardization, but that was so much overkill it's not even funny. And yes, a small library would be more than well served by a 5505.

Would not have. It sounds like of because out loud we often contract it to "not've" and lazily pronounce 've as uhv. Double contractions like "I'd've'" are also common in verbal speech, but unused in writing. This sometimes spills into writing because we're so used to how we say things out loud and most text editors, which only have spell checkers and not grammar checkers, happily approve of using a correctly-spelled of in inappropriate contexts when we mess up.

My inner pedant winced at that too.

Then there was "the very furthest, most rural corners"; when talking about literal, physical distance, "farthest" is the correct choice, not "furthest".

I've seen this sort of thing a lot in the private sector as well. Many managers and directors don't trust their own IT staff, yet believe every word out of the mouths of sales people. After all, no one ever got fired by buying Cisco, right?

Geez. I have a business class internet connection at home (I serve out some small websites for myself and my small business) and I don't even need one of those. Christ - a $50.00 D-Link would be sufficient for that one room library. I understand the benefits of standardization, but that was so much overkill it's not even funny. And yes, a small library would be more than well served by a 5505.

That's really not how big IT works.

Small home router may need regular rebooting, and there aren't any out-of-band management abilities so someone needs to drive there. It may have a power supply wallwart of a finite lifespan, or merely may not plug into a PDU unit. It isn't rack mountable. It may have security vulnerabilities. Or something as simple as power cable falling out the back of it because there is no cable retention.

Besides standardizing on a vendor is a great thing. The personnel are Cisco trained. They likely use Cisco specific management and monitoring tools to keep an eye on the network. They could be using Cisco specific routing or VPN protocols. There's only one vendor to call if there's a problem. The OS is the same on everything. Etc etc....

Cisco tells Ars "the criticism of the State is misplaced and fails to recognize the forward-looking nature of their vision. The positive impact of broadband infrastructure on education, job creation, and economic development is well established, and we are committed to working with the State to realize these benefits for the people of West Virginia now and into the future."

Those routers will be rusted hunks of junk before 95% of the locations given them will actually require such a beefy piece of equipment.

Cisco tells Ars "the criticism of the State is misplaced and fails to recognize the forward-looking nature of their vision. The positive impact of broadband infrastructure on education, job creation, and economic development is well established, and we are committed to working with the State to realize these benefits for the people of West Virginia now and into the future."

Those routers will be rusted hunks of junk before 95% of the locations given them will actually require such a beefy piece of equipment.

What everyone seems to have missed in this debate is that a Cisco salesman wrote this up so that they would get a huge bonus for the sale. The managers at the State level never got IT involved in the final process because they didn't see a need at that point.

I have worked in multiple types of civil service and this is a sadly typical occurrence. Managers don't know the technical part of a purchase and push for whatever the vendor touts to them. Right now we are watching a vendor push basically useless Mondopads in place of a computer with a projector. For use in rooms where no one can read the Mondopad.... Sad to watch, but management will never listen to technicians. "If we knew anything, wouldn't we be managers?" A direct quote from one of our top managers..... Aaarrgh!

Cisco did nothing wrong (except morally, I suppose). WVA wrote a blank check and took Cisco's word for everything, because they were either too lazy or too stupid to research or consult an outside party to find out what they needed.

This is exactly why some people oppose higher taxes - because the government is incapable of spending the money in a reasonable way. (What those people fail to acknowledge is that private enterprises will do the same thing or worse).

As for Cisco's comment about the "forward-looking nature of their vision," perhaps this is our first clue that West Virginia plans to annex all the states east of the Mississippi?

Bingo. Pointing the finger at Cisco is misguided. They're a business, like any other, looking to maximize profits and move high $$ / high margin goods. Yeah, they could have been more vocal about suggesting an appropriate solution instead of this overkill, but that's not their job!

The state failed to perform even cursory due diligence or to identify what their user needs are. Accountability should be properly assigned to the government employees involved and frankly someone (and possibly their team) should lose their job(s) for this type of gross mismanagement.

Sadly, this sort of waste is amplified hundreds (thousands?) of times across all layers of government, from municipal or county to Federal. This is absolutely legitimate reason as to why many people (myself included) believe in limiting government in general, and strongly curtailing their funding. Force them to use their funds efficiently! Without accountability and consequences for this type of blatant incompetence (or worse) there's no threat to the people responsible and the behavior will continue.

"unless a school has two power sources the feature of dual power supplies would have no use."

That's certainly not true... Power supplies are one of the items which fail most often, so even if you're plugging both into the same outlet, having both may prevent the router from going down, and staying down for however long it takes Cisco to ship in a replacement.

I'm also sympathetic to IT's attempts to standardize on a single model as much as possible, as managing firmware changes and tracking down bugs in several different devices consumes far more IT man-hours. Still, the single unit they standardized on should be the lowest-end device they could manage, and the few high-end devices could have been another, higher-end model. Besides, from the exchange it doesn't sound like the state's IT department was involved at all, and Cisco just asked for (and got) a blank check.

Forget a Cisco 5505... I can head over to Amazon.com right now and pick-up a D-Link home router for $40, which includes 8 ethernet ports, maximum-legal power (20db) 802.11n, a USB port (for printer sharing and/or a USB NAS using SMB), and even has an RS-232 header which could be connected to a modem for out-of-band management. That device is fully compatible with DD-WRT, meaning just a firmware upgrade will make it an industrial-strength Linux firewall/router with all the configuration options and software you could want. My point being, I'm a Sr. Network Admin, and I'd prefer to maintain a bunch of those cheap-o devices in hundreds of satellite offices, rather than the array of high-end Cisco switches and routers I currently fight with.

Would not have. It sounds like of because out loud we often contract it to "not've" and lazily pronounce 've as uhv. Double contractions like "I'd've'" are also common in verbal speech, but unused in writing. This sometimes spills into writing because we're so used to how we say things out loud and most text editors, which only have spell checkers and not grammar checkers, happily approve of using a correctly-spelled of in inappropriate contexts when we mess up.

Quote:

The Department of Education told him that it "... Education would not of made..."

This is exactly why some people oppose higher taxes - because the government is incapable of spending the money in a reasonable way. (What those people fail to acknowledge is that private enterprises will do the same thing or worse).

The difference being the government takes your money at gunpoint before wasting it, and no matter how much money the government wastes it will keep forcing you to give it more. Indeed, government waste and inefficiency is always used as an excuse for more money and higher taxes.

Whereas private enterprises have to somehow trick people into giving them money voluntarily, and when they run out of money they go belly-up and it ends.

Look, if you are a Cisco sales engineer and someone at the state says "Hey we need 100 3945's" and you say "Uh, that might be a little over kill?" and they say "Nope, we figured it out, that's what we want" why should they keep digging to drop their sales?

Also I doubt they paid 20k a router, we get our 3945's for just over 10k each and we only spend about a million a year on capital stuff.

What everyone seems to have missed in this debate is that a Cisco salesman wrote this up so that they would get a huge bonus for the sale. The managers at the State level never got IT involved in the final process because they didn't see a need at that point.

I have worked in multiple types of civil service and this is a sadly typical occurrence. Managers don't know the technical part of a purchase and push for whatever the vendor touts to them. Right now we are watching a vendor push basically useless Mondopads in place of a computer with a projector. For use in rooms where no one can read the Mondopad.... Sad to watch, but management will never listen to technicians. "If we knew anything, wouldn't we be managers?" A direct quote from one of our top managers..... Aaarrgh!

This is true.

You know what is hilarious? I work for a largely sales-and-marketing oriented company. (Yeah they treat IT like crap, and sometimes make extremely misguided IT decisions without asking us first.) They say and do whatever it takes to close a deal. And yet they trust other companies' sales people! They bought turds packaged in a gold box with a bow on top, over and over and over again, just because that sales guy had a better presentation and they liked him better. They of all people should know better, no?

Finally, Cisco is accused of knowingly selling the state larger routers than it needed and of showing a "wanton indifference to the interests of the public."

"Nothing wrong" is an odd way to frame it. Perhaps you meant, "nothing illegal".

I did. Also, if I walk into to Best Buy and they sell me a huge TV and some dumb warranty that I don't need, can I charge them with "wanton indifference to the interest of the consumer"? This is on the state.

But none of you understand: Those routers were FREE! President Obama gave them that money, It didn't cost the citizens a thing!

They federal government gives money to the state which then is responsible for how it is spend.

The Cisco 3945 is available for about $9,000 - $12,000 online.

I'm guessing they didn't bother looking.

That's not how it works.

Edit: Ok. Spot saved.Seriously though, that's not how it works. I deal with gov't contracting and I can tell you it'll be someone's butt if they go and buy something off the internet just on a lark. Frequently, their hands are tied to something called GSA Advantage, and what's called Federal Strategic Sourcing (in federal contracting anyway).

Long story short, frequently a contracting officer MUST buy from a GSA contract which WAS supposed to be competitively bid, open market, between prospective vendors as part of a larger contract. Once that higher level agency settles that contract...... viola! You now have a fixed price for other agencies, that they have to follow, that is actually based off of what was (or should have been) an open bid competition.

OF COURSE......1) You're assuming GSA played it fair (go see the trouble they got into about a year or so ago)2) That the companies are playing fair (major companies colluding to keep prices high? no way!)3) That some member of government hasn't interfered with this process.

Tricky thing with 3.... Congress can set rules on how the money can be spent (probably similar with state legislatures too). They CAN dictate that funding be spent in a particular way, say, that funding must be spent during a certain year and only on companies designated by Congress. And it's not just Congress, the executive branch (state and fed) can inject certain "requirements" also. It's how Haliburton, KBR, and Blackwater got some of their huge contracts.

Sadly, the little guys involved who may honestly MEAN to do right by the people, often are in subordinate positions to the people mentioned in #1, 2, and 3.

All that said? Angry Drunk Bureaucrat's Rule of Bureaucracy #4:

"Rule #4: "It's about the money; follow the money."

Follow the money. See who benefitted from what. Cisco made fat bank off this of course. Who in the chain of things could have benefitted? Not just in actual money trading hands, but benefitted in other ways (Bobby, the contracting officer's kid, got a job with Cisco shortly afterwards..... for example).

"Forward-looking nature of their vision" my ass! Nobody is arguing that rural users don't deserve adequate connectivity and modern equipment. But that doesn't negate the obvious need to scale technology solutions to the size of the deployment. That one room shack of a library is going to provide the same amount of education and job creation with a $20K Cisco router or a $50 D-Link box, and if you count the cost of the router, they could have spent $19,950 to hire additional staff, purchase other technology, expand programs, or just fix the damn roof, any of which would have been more useful.

Certainly, the state officials who bought this stuff deserve a fair share of the blame, but Cisco deserves the most contempt in my eyes. There's a moral obligation for those of us with more knowledge of technology to not swindle the hell out of those less knowledgeable. That doesn't mean that salespeople shouldn't sell their products or that it's wrong to portray things in the best light for your employer, but wantonly taking advantage of the State to the tune of $5M+ is unconscionable.

Also, if I walk into to Best Buy and they sell me a larger TV and some dumb warranty that I don't need, can I charge them with ignoring my interests? This is on the state.

If the sales man tells you that your DVD player and satellite TV service won't work with the smaller, cheaper TV, and so you NEED to buy the more expensive model, he's defrauding you. You'd be stupid to naively trust him, but he's still in the wrong, and probably breaking the law, just on such a small scale nobody can be bothered to try and prosecute him.

Cisco appears to have done this on a large scale, and they're a "trusted" vendor, so they must maintain higher standards than this. If they can't be bothered to do so, then they will be a BANNED vendor for all government projects in the future, rather than a trusted one.

But none of you understand: Those routers were FREE! President Obama gave them that money, It didn't cost the citizens a thing!

They federal government gives money to the state which then is responsible for how it is spend.

The Cisco 3945 is available for about $9,000 - $12,000 online.

I'm guessing they didn't bother looking.

That's not how it works

Bingo. "That's not how it works" is about the only correct reply here, without posting a 10 page rebuttal.

Lots of non-IT people posting nonsense in this topic. Just because you setup a home or SMB router doesn't make you a networking expert. If I showed you what a real router looked like your head would explode.